


But let it go, and you learn

by coeurgryffondor



Series: but not what we may be [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst and Feels, Cold War, F/M, Hetalia Countries Using Human Names, Historical, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rewrite, Slow Burn, Stillbirth, Unplanned Pregnancy, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coeurgryffondor/pseuds/coeurgryffondor
Summary: Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.—Maxim GorkyThis is a place from which there is no return, not for people like the once mighty Duke Gilbert von Beilschmidt and the once dignified Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria, princess of Hungary.
Relationships: Hungary & Prussia (Hetalia), Hungary/Russia (Hetalia), Past Austria/Hungary (Hetalia) - Relationship, past Hungary/Turkey (Hetalia)
Series: but not what we may be [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1349884
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. 1949

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [But Let It Go, And You Learn](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/536758) by coeurgryffondor. 



There is a sense of finality as they are led into the room.

Gilbert can hardly stand, having taken Erzsébet’s arm to stay upright and maintain his pride; Ludwig takes her other, to give the impression that they were escorting her as gentlemen do ladies and not that his brother is weak and dying. Not before the others who stand in judgement of them, as they are led into the room.

Or maybe Ludwig is trying to get in every last moment of contact with the Hungarian as they come to stand before the victorious Ally nations, a quiver to his body as she leans into his side, Gilbert leaning into her.

Roderich stands behind her, close: too close, perhaps, given all they have been through and said and not said. His body is warm, just as it always was during those cold Austrian nights in a bed they used to share, in a house they used to share, in a life they used to share — used to live.

Was that only decades ago? It feels like centuries have passed.

They had all been in Berlin, when the end had come: Ludwig, to be with his people; Gilbert, to be with his brother; Roderich, to be with his once-wife; and Erzsébet, because the Austrian had feared for her had she stayed in Budapest. From what she’s heard, he was right, and it sickens her to no end to think what has been done to her women — women who simply were, and for that were violated.

As if some men had no sense of dignity nor morality: the Soviets truly were a godless people.

The screams that haunt her dreams are pushed to the side lest she be sick; to distract herself Erzsébet takes in the scene before her, noticing that the Ally nations aren’t actually before her, not fully: Wang Yao isn’t here. Instead it’s just the Big Three plus Francis Bonnefoy, because when had Francis Bonnefoy ever missed an opportunity to show up and be smug? But the smarmy bastard looks as miserable as she feels, Erzsébet feeling her breathing quicken as her mind tries to make sense of what’s going on. They’d languished in their cells for weeks now, each one separated just too far to touch the other, Roderich across from her quiet as Gilbert screamed and Ludwig cried.

Her family: her boys. Their clothing today remains as it had been, when they were in the bunker, when the end finally came. They’d laid together, Erzsébet holding Ludwig as if he were her child, Gilbert holding the two of them, shedding his own tears that the younger Beilschmidt would need longer to come to grips with. Roderich had sat at the foot of the bed, separate, removed, watching them: processing in his own way, his ex-wife knew, his hand stroking her calves as if this was a quiet night in and not the end of a world war.

They’d heard the bombs make impact. They’d heard the screams as doors were blown open. They’d heard the soldiers desperate for victory, desperate for the end, coming to get them.

They’d heard the death knell of who they once were.

Was Honda Kiku with Wang right now? Probably: let the westerners deal with the westerners and the easterners deal with the easterners. He’d always been a hard nut for Erzsébet to crack but Ludwig had liked him which meant he’d had her approval. She’d have liked to have gotten to know him better, to have seen Japan as he’d known it. Once she’d watched him paint a cherry blossom tree blooming before penning a short poem in the most graceful calligraphy she’d ever seen: he’d said it was not one of his finer works, and that he would present her with a more suitable piece as soon as he was able, but she had hung it on her wall all the same. Now she’d never know what he’d written.

Where was Feliciano? His and Ludwig’s relationship had always been complex, and private — the others knew not to pry, nor to mention the Italian’s name after he broke Ludwig’s young heart. She’d thought they’d have time for the German to explain, about the ring she’d seen him come home with, and the dresses he’d packed, and what it was in the photos he kept in his breast pocket that always made him sigh so softly, her heart melting to see his love.

His not being here, though, Erzsébet takes to mean he must be safe elsewhere: Ludwig was her almost-son, yes, but Feliciano she had known for centuries, watching his own young heart break with Leopold’s death, Roderich the one to comfort them as they faced the new world before them.

The new world before them: Erzsébet trembles at the thought, feeling Roderich’s hands slide over her hips from behind, Ludwig wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Gilbert, however, drops her arm, standing on his own: pride was the sin he’d most often confessed to, when he’d been a Catholic.

Alfred Jones, whom Erzsébet has only seen up close twice before, steps forward: she can see his youth and discomfort. “We’ve, uh–” he gestures to his allies on either side of him “–well, we’ve made our decision, within the confines of what had been dictated to us. We all know… we all know how that goes.” She’s surprised: his French is as flawless as Francis’s. It calms her heart, momentarily, to be distracted by such a ludicrous realization. “But now this is, well, this is a European affair, so I’ll….” He looks to Arthur Kirkland, who has his eyes cast down yet knows to nod. “Alright then,” and Jones switches to English, “I’ll excuse myself from this.” He’s unsure yet calm and reserved: so much like his once father who raises his head to share a sad look with the American. Teutonic, she’s learned the English language calls it, though Gilbert was never quite so standoffish as they are in that moment. Perhaps she hadn’t understood fully, when, once, Francis had attempted to explain it to her.

As Jones leaves, the gap becomes obvious, between Kirkland and Francis to one side of the room, and Ivan Ivanovich Braginski alone on the other side.

Oh God! They’re being split up!

Kirkland gestures to Francis to speak but as he steps forward, the Frenchman grimaces in pain, clutching his side and shaking his head. Braginski’s glee contrasts Kirkland’s concern as he steps to Francis, whispering something to him. The pause allows Ludwig and Roderich to tighten their grip on Erzsébet, who takes Gilbert’s hand, the Prussian nation standing taller as if he too wasn’t in pain.

“Well.” Kirkland clears his throat, rubbing his face with the palm of one hand. “Let’s get on with this then.” English to the core: perhaps he could have, in a different life, explained that meaning of Teutonic to the Hungarian. “Beilschm–” but the sound dies in his throat, a panic to his eyes, as he looks between the brothers.

Erzsébet’s blood is pumping, her head starting to spin, Roderich forgotten as the brothers step towards each other, her hands clutching each of their shoulders. What words could they say in any language? There are none as soft blue eyes hardened by two world wars seek comfort from bloodshot eyes that had finally found a quiet life of peace.

“Germany,” Kirkland clarifies. “If you could come with us, let’s keep this civilized. No need to get soldiers in here and all that.”

But Ludwig doesn’t comply, not right away, and in the end the soldiers need to drag him pass Kirkland and Francis, two more coming forward to hold back the remaining defeated nations though Roderich isn’t resisting, only Gilbert and Erzsébet do, trying to hold Ludwig’s hand for just a moment longer before he is, as when they were in their cells, too far away.

It kills her, how small Ludwig looks in that moment: not in his height nor his muscles but in his eyes, those eyes that had shown up at her as a child. The child is still there, the innocent hope that everyone could get along, the young boy that would lay on her lap and tell her how one day the world would be better. She’d encouraged that, treated him like a child, held him to her breast as if he was hers. She’d raised him, after all: he was hers as much as he was Gilbert’s, no matter what her husband had said.

No longer able to hold back her tears, she turns to Gilbert and his warm embrace but instead Roderich catches her, holding her close in a crushing grip, much as he had when the previous war’s end had come and they’d prepared for the end of their life together. She’s back in that tent, the squeeze of her husband she thought she’d never part with, far away from Kirkland’s voice saying, “Edelstein, you too please.” Erzsébet barely has time to look up into his face that is hard and set yet covered with tears, his coy smile for her to give her comfort as he releases her, stepping back and away. The soldiers part for him to pass between them, his eyes never leaving hers.

Things between them had been so different, since the divorce: how did you resume a relationship so abruptly halted? They’ve had only one night to themselves, once they realized the end was coming. The Beilschmidts had sat in the hall without comment to give the once Edelsteins privacy in the room, and they’d used that privacy to make love over and over like they used to, Roderich attentive and gentle, the prince and husband and lover he had once been, the man she had fallen in love with over and over again.

She doesn’t know if he still loves her; she doesn’t know if she still loves him. But those things hadn’t mattered that night, nor as they’d sat in their cells, staring at one another, longing for things which once were. Erzsébet is so used to Roderich being there, being hers — or, rather, her being his — that she can’t imagine a world without him. Part of her had assumed that, when peace came, she’d be Mrs Roderich Edelstein again: it was what her entire life had led her to, after all.

After, she’ll feel stupid for how long it took to hit her, really just hit her hard in the face, that if half of them had been called by Kirkland to join him and Francis….

“No!” It’s Ludwig who screams first, for his brother, for his almost mother, soldiers holding him back. “No! Please! You can’t!”

Something grabs Erzsébet’s middle, pulling her back from him, and she doesn’t know if the screams filling the room are in her head or out loud or if it’s her or if it’s someone else, Gilbert behind her, trying to pry a soldier off her while trying to reach his brother, trying to say goodbye–

* * *

They never do get the chance to say goodbye: the thought is all consuming on the long, slow train ride to Moscow, where they’re processed before another long, even slower train ride to wherever the hell it is they’re going. Erzsébet doesn’t even process the places, the names, the people they pass: she can only see Ludwig’s precious face stained with tears, Roderich fading into the shadow of the war room where their sentences about been announced, Gilbert punching the wall after the others had left and it’s just him and her and their captor, standing silently, waiting.

They’d had an affair in the 18th century, for a short while when she was mad at Roderich for so obviously taking up with Camille de Bonnefoy. They’d almost had an affair in the 19th century, too, right before her marriage. After his favorite mistress had died, Gilbert told Erzsébet how he’d have liked to have married her. She’d laughed and he’d blushed and then they’d hugged, knowing how poorly they would have fit together. He’s her friend, her best friend, her closest friend, somewhere between lover and brother.

And now he’s her only friend.

She clings to Gilbert as he clings to her, always together; she’d whispered one night, when Braginski had wandered off to take a piss, that she fears Gilbert will be taken from her and she’ll never see him again. He’d whispered that he fears Braginski will touch her, as godless and horrid as the soldiers of his nation while taking hers.

The once proud and strong Prussian had been truly defeated that day, everything of value lost: his freedom, his brother, his sense of her safety. Erzsébet knows the feeling, felt it at the end of the previous war when her husband walked away after the papers were signed, as if the divorce had been his idea and not something foisted on them. Nothing: that’s what she’d felt like in that moment, like nothing, like she had no value at all, the lowest point in her life.

Lower than being the orphan child of an outsider father and unwed mother in the tribe.

Lower than being a prize and sexual object in a man’s harem.

Lower than being told her child had died and her husband had left their home without a word.

Now they are truly nothing.

* * *

Their life is defined by the train car on the journey, a bed on one side of the compartment, a bench of seats across from it. During the day the Russian sits with them, facing them, watching them. He’ll say things that make himself laugh but it’s in a language they don’t know from a man holding them captive. Erzsébet can barely manage with French and English some days, having spoken nothing but German for years — sometimes she fears she’s forgetting her Hungarian — with Russian never having been a requirement for her to learn in her many captive centuries. And Gilbert, well, he’s never learned anything he didn’t have to, which was why he spoke both heinous French to offend Francis and heinous Hungarian to amuse Erzsébet; Polish was his only foreign language of any skill, a secret she isn’t sure he knows she’s learned.

At night they lay together in the bed, and it’s not the same, Gilbert isn’t Roderich as he spoons her, and Erzsébet isn’t his mistress he’d loved as his wife, but it’s close enough to lull them to sleep as Braginski disappears from the room to Lord-knows-where, locking the door so they can’t leave. They’ve known each other for centuries, seen each other at their highest highs and, now, their lowest lows — there’s some comfort in that, quiet and theirs, that Braginski can neither see nor take from them: a strength from being nothing, together.

When did loud, obnoxious, self-centered Gilbert Beilschmidt become her best friend? Roderich would be the one to tend to her, Ludwig going out to take revenge on whoever had hurt someone he loved, but Gilbert… Gilbert would be the one to break her fall, no matter what it did to him, never saying a word about it. She hadn’t even noticed him doing it until they were parted, after the previous war, and this man she’d come to rely on for her emotional well being was gone: the man who had listened to the stories of her youth, who had visited her as she recovered from childbirth before holding her as she mourned, who had allowed her to mother his brother because he knew how much she’d needed that.

She’s never had female friends, not really, except maybe, centuries ago, Irina when they’d lived together in Sadık’s harem. Would she see Irina again? Would Irina want to see her? Erzsébet knows of what has happened to Irina in the last few years yet she had not reached out, had not said anything. Irina had kept her secrets once in their golden cage; Erzsébet had paid her back poorly. The Hungarian told herself it was because they’re less important now, nations incarnate, to their officials: more private citizens than anything else, unable to do much — but still.

She could have tried.

She could have done a lot of things.

Erzsébet hasn’t been contacted about what’s going on in Hungary since her marriage, no longer feels what her people feels. She’s so dead on the inside, it often doesn’t matter; maybe that’s why she can’t connect with them, feel them as she once did.

If she was no longer Hungary, what was she? Who was she?

Gilbert’s arm about her keeps her grounded, the only real thing left in her world.

* * *

The house is far from the town which is days away from anything Erzsébet would call a city. But that’s Russia, and she knew it’d be some place like this: some place where even if she ran, she wouldn’t know which way to go and would freeze in desperate isolation before the sun had even set. Or perhaps Braginski would chase after her to punish his prisoner; she has no delusions about the cruelty he, like his men, is capable of despite his childlike exterior.

This is a place from which there is no return, not for people like the once mighty Duke Gilbert von Beilschmidt and the once dignified Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria, princess of Hungary.

The thought echoes in her mind like names announced in a ballroom, her head kept down as they follow Braginski from room to room. He shows each off proudly for reasons she cannot fathom: his study, the dining room, an antechamber leading to a sitting room with a fireplace. The fire is lit and warm yet no one sits in that room, instead huddling in the antechamber despite their obvious chill. Each nation has a long face that turns briefly towards the intruding newcomers, the Hungarian stepping closer to Gilbert to grasp his arm more tightly — did they look like that too? Did they wear the same expression of hopeless resignation as well? It makes her shiver to think that, trying to force her mind to instead recall names of people she once knew — Irina and Feliks, Anna and Jakub, Mihai and Simeon, but Lithuania? Belarus? Which one was Estonia and which Latvia?

All Erzsébet’s energy had gone into her three German men: what wasted effort.

“Follow,” Braginski almost sings in terrible English and he leads them upstairs, down a long hall filled with doors seemingly belonging to the men of the house, judging by the flags. “You,” and he points at Gilbert and a door. “Come,” and he gestures for Erzsébet to follow him — only Erzsébet. Her heart begins to race, Gilbert moving to follow. “No, no!” Braginski says happily. “You stay here, it’s not good to have a man in a lady’s room.”

“I want to know where her room is,” Gilbert says defiantly in near perfect English, and Erzsébet knows that took every ounce of strength he had to challenge their captor. She can see the lines cracking that he hides so well, and hopes the Russian can’t.

He smiles and shakes his head, turning from them as he sighs, “You will stay or I will end you.” He walks down the hall.

“Erzsi–” Gilbert grabs her arm, the Hungarian rooted on the spot, unable to follow as ordered “–I will not let anything happen to you, I swear, I will find you, scream if he tries anything–“ A hand on her shoulder pulls her away from her friend.

“I said,” and Braginski’s voice now has an edge to it that slices the air like a knife, “we are going now.” He pushes her down the hall first this time.

She chances one last look back, at Gilbert, knowing he has no one else either: no brother to protect, no cousin to tease, no friends to fall back on. Only Erzsébet.

They pass the stairs again, a few more doors, then turn a corner. This hallway is shorter, three doors on the left, one on the right standing alone.

“That’s me!” Braginski says with pride, somewhere between excited child and smug teenager, pointing at the lone door. It must be the biggest bedroom in the house. “And my sisters.” He points to the two doors closer to them which, unlike the other doors she’s seen, are properly decorated: one with brightly colored patterns and a cup containing a few wild flowers, the other with dried and wilting flowers forming an arch around it. “And this is you.” The Russian walks to the end of the hall, opening the last door.

The first door, with the patterns and wild floors, says Ирина; the second Ната; the one across from her Ваня. Their names in Russian, she assumes, though she doesn’t know how to read it. That’s when she sees the sign on her door, Елизавета, which makes her shiver with disgust as she passes Braginski watching her.

She has been called many names in many languages, renamed by many men, all to take something from her, but never in an alphabet she couldn’t read. Perhaps she is now, truly, finally, no longer Hungary.

The man seems pleased with himself.

“You like?” The room is, admittedly, lovely: a large best stands in the middle, matching furniture scattered about. There’s a bay window with a small sitting area, and a bookshelf filled with letters she cannot pronounce, passing it to look out the window. Though the hour is late, the sun golden as it sets, the landscape on the other side of the glass is barren, all of Russia stretched before her.

This is her prison cell, one more in a string of centuries of captivity. At least in the last prison, as awful as it had been, she could hear her men, could see them and know they were together.

Braginski startles her when he says something with great affection, turning to find him in the doorway. She stares at him as he looks at her, expecting him to repeat himself in his broken English but instead taken aback again when he responds in elegant French, “My sister will get you in the morning for breakfast which the others take together. You may join them downstairs if you’d like, to pass the evening, or settle in. Do you like your room?”

There’s something in his voice, an edge of hope that he’s done the right thing, that his picking out this room for her is appreciated. She knows he wants her to acknowledge that.

“Nein.”

Her carefully chosen response only serves to make him smirk.

“Too bad.” He leaves without a glance back.

* * *

From her bra she removes three old photographs, cared for for years, her only personal belongings of any importance as she moved between empires and kingdoms and dictatorships and prisons.

The first is an old black and white photograph someone colored in years ago: her wedding to Roderich, Erzsébet in a dress too large for her frame, the Austrian in a suit for once fashionable for the time. Their smiles are stiff and awkward but it reminds her of their marriage and the happy days it brought them, before the bad ones.

The second is also black and white but uncolored and curled at the edges: a little Lutz smiling between Erzsébet and Gilbert, the German maybe nine or ten years old. She can see the blue in his wide eyes, and the love too.

The last is a color photograph: Erzsébet between Roderich and Ludwig, Gilbert with his arm thrown around his brother’s shoulders. They’re all in their uniforms, nice and fresh and clean, and though their smiles are small, they are at least genuine, a rare moment of calm and contentment before it all went wrong again.

Erzsébet holds the photos to her chest and cries. She cries and cries and cries, fearful that another day like that — another day to just be, together — will never come again.


	2. 1951

Breakfast they eat together in the dining room, without Braginski, who is typically in his office or still in bed all morning, one of his sisters tending to him. Lunch they eat whenever they’d like, in the kitchen, as they find time between their chores and tasks. Dinner they eat in near silence in the dining room, Braginski at the head of the table, his sisters sat on either side. Meals break up the monotony of the days.

By now the dynamics of it all have become mundane to Erzsébet, who has at least maybe, after two years, settled in. Irina had, contrary to all the Hungarian’s expectations, been happy to see the woman again and invite her to sit with her, helping to teach Erzsébet and Gilbert Russian. She’d explained, along with Toris — that was his name, Toris Laurinaitis — that her brother kept the nations incarnate here or at another house, further south, because some of the other men had “irritated him to no end as well as being more forward with Nata than he felt appropriate.”

(“She’s a sweet girl when you get to know her,” Toris had said which had made Gilbert laugh.

“Did you miss her throwing a fork at your head yesterday? Because she didn’t.”

“Gilbert!” Erzsébet had chided before turning back to Irina. “So that would be the other…”

“Soviet republics, yes,” Irina had finished. “The house is much quieter without them.”

“Are you implying Mircea Dalca,” Erzsébet had questioned, “was part of that as well?”

“Mircea? No, no! He–” but she’d been interrupted by Mihai who had leaned in, locked eyes on the Hungarian, and challenged,

“Miss ruling over my brother and I?”

“He’s a good boy and I miss his gentle nature,” she’d responded with all the dignity she had left; Roderich had taught her that a lady with her power should never be visibly ruffled.

The Romanian had sneered before moving to join them properly, saying, “Mircea and I get along too well, Ivanovich sent him to stay with the others both to report back to him and to keep us apart.”

Gilbert had said nothing at that, Irina looking sad and Toris looking anywhere that wasn’t Mihai, but Erzsébet had met his gaze and calmly whispered, “I’m sorry about that, Mihai. I know how much he means to you.”

Her mostly-enemy had snorted at that in amusement but also, she knew, gratitude that he’d never express in words.)

Others, like Jakub and Simeon, were also happy to see Erzsébet, while Anna could give Nataliya Ivanovicha a run for her money in the staring daggers category.

(“Should I even ask?” Irina had whispered into her ear one day as they quietly cut vegetables.

“She had issues with my husband and I and our happy marriage.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” the Ukrainian had laughed. “You are always the kadın, no matter the situation.”)

The most interesting part of living in the house she found to be Braginski himself: he seemed almost annoyed most of the time that he had to tend to so many captive nations under his control. Except for dinner, he was always elsewhere: his bedroom, his study, on a trip, in the sitting room with its fireplace — separated from them, both literally and figuratively.

She’s learned that the sitting room is for him and him alone. Sometimes Nataliya will follow him in, sit at his feet, hold his hand, and sometimes the Russian lets her. Erzsébet tries not to stare from the other room, perhaps playing cards with Jakub and Gilbert, or else talking about days gone by with Irina and Feliks, but both the man and his relationship with others fascinated her, especially his relationship with Nataliya who worshipped the ground he walked on yet was often met with a backhand across the face. Irina he showed less affection to but at least never hit; Erzsébet wouldn’t be able to control herself if he did, falling back into a protective feeling towards the older woman who never judged, no matter what the Hungarian did or failed to do.

“I just find that like so hard to imagine,” Feliks says one evening as Braginski sits alone, sipping vodka and reading a book. Erzsébet hadn’t realized she’d been staring.

“What part?” Irina asks, working her way through a pile of darning she had. The Hungarian busies herself with trimming the loose threads, preparing needles, and finding other spots that need attention.

“The two of you, in a harem. Did you just like, lay about all day?”

“That’s not what the harem was like,” Erzsébet responds in a near gut reaction, fed up after centuries of European men failing to understand what a harem even was.

A hand falls to her knee, Irina smiling softly in comfort. “The harem was the part of Sadık’s house for the women and children, though it was obviously a touch more extravagant than the average man in the Ottoman Empire had.”

“It was his attempt at something imperial and sultanesque,” Erzsébet says with an eye roll.

“But still, it was quite nice. The garden was lovely.”

“The garden was lovely,” she agrees, her eyes drifting back to Braginski in front of the fireplace. She finds him watching her but cannot look away. “Everyone loves a golden cage with flowers.”

* * *

The antechamber is cold in winter which seems to drag on for years before the brief respite of summer, yet the others don’t seem as bothered by this as Erzsébet feels. At least now she can read, even if the books hold little interest for her and are typically more complex than her limited vocabulary and grammar allow her to comprehend.

Slowly, she’s begun to make or remake friends: Irina, whom she last spent time with in the sixteenth century; Feliks, whom its been even longer since she’s been close with; Jakub, who was content under Austro-Hungarian rule with his treatment by Erzsébet; even Toris, who blushes adorably and is rather handsome.

“You would think that,” Gilbert had protested when she’d told him this. The East German — it still felt weird to think let alone say — had found her room and, though the other men had warned him not to, snuck in most nights to stay with her despite the risk of being caught. There’s nothing sexual to the act, nor to their sharing a bed; they’re both simply grateful and content with the company, the warmth, and the knowledge that neither is alone in still crying themself to sleep.

(“Once a pagan, always a pagan.”

“Weren’t you a pagan once?”

“Slander.”

“Sure, Gilbert, sure.”)

Despite the progress in making friends, in learning Russian, in finding a rhythm, Erzsébet cannot accept that this is what she’s come to, that this is her hand: no control over her life, forgotten and discarded in a town not even on a map. Everything she had depended on Ivan Ivanovich, a man who hasn’t spoken to her since she’d arrived and whom she cannot makes heads nor tails of. It’s not her first time under a man’s control, far from it, but it is a new type of domination.

Captured as a child in a battle, more than a millennium earlier, she and Simeon had been allowed to play together as they waited for her tribesmen to collect her.

Many medieval states had welcomed her as their “honored guest” which, by the time it was the Polish kingdom’s turn to “host” her, Erzsébet had realized meant she was being shopped around to whatever man would buy her to pay her king’s bills.

In Sadık’s harem she’d risen from a treasured gözde to his only kadın, prized above all others. They had at least reached an understanding in their relationship, as fragile and tenuous as it had been until the end.

Life under Austrian rule had seen an incredible change in her treatment, from when she was left to the care of Roderich’s household staff who saw her as nothing through to her marriage to a man she knew both loved her and was obsessed with controlling her. Yet the whole time, Erzsébet had always been kept at home, told to be a lady, while her husband went off with his mistresses and she itched even to ride a horse.

And now…

And now she had to find a new way in this new situation.

* * *

They’re sitting on the front steps, Irina knitting something for her brother as Erzsébet clumsily knits something for Toris, unless it turns out terribly — then it would be for Gilbert. Braginski has been gone for a week, to the south with his younger sister and Toris, to visit the other Soviet nations; he’s suppose to return today, Irina excited to see her siblings again.

The Hungarian puts the knitting down on her lap, turning to look at her companion who continues knitting as if she hasn’t noticed. “May I ask a personal question?”

“Do we have anything personal left,” the Ukrainian challenges lightly, never stopping the movement of her needle, “to hide from one another?”

“How many people call your brother by his pet name?”

That gets a pause, Irina staring at her project for a moment before her head jerks to the side. “Come again?”

“It doesn’t strike me as many,” Erzsébet responds instead.

Blonde eyebrows come together. “Are you judging him?”

A shrug of the shoulders. “I’m not trying to.” The effort wasn’t worth it, really; what would she gain?

An uneasy silence falls over them, Irina resuming her knitting before finally responding, “Those who once did… they’re mostly dead now.”

Erzsébet has no more questions after that. Her scarf ends up not terribly wonky, but she still gives it to Gilbert anyway who wears it all during dinner.

* * *

Mail comes once every other week, normally after breakfast, but today it comes while they’re sat together. One by one a silence descends upon them as they each realize in turn that Braginski has entered the room, flipping through the envelopes to hand out. No thank yous are murmured; there’s no point. His task complete, Braginski leaves with the mail that remains in his hand.

Some of the nations get more mail than others: it was simply how it was. Erzsébet however gets the fewest, and noticeably: about one every six months. She knows the Soviets are going through her mail, only letting the worse of it through, but she also wonders if Braginski keeps some of their mail back for himself.

Her mind begins to weave the tale, of how her country is being treated the worse based on what the correspondence tends to contain, but she takes satisfaction in knowing it’s because they’re the most rebellious, that her people will no longer sit and submit to another’s rule, not after all they have been through. When the mail comes as they’re gathered in the hallway, Braginski watches her read her letters, his face never changing, but she likes to smile at him to irritate him, causing a scowl before he storms off. It’s a little victory, on behalf of her people.

Normally the news is trivial, the nations sharing what they know with one another, but every once in a while someone leaves without a word, going up to their room and slamming the door. Perhaps Irina had been wrong and they did have personal things left to hide from one another after all.

The news never mentions Ludwig or Roderich. The men could be dead, and neither Erzsébet nor Gilbert would know.

* * *

Sometimes she hears him walk by her door, as she lays in bed beside Gilbert: Braginski will pause in his heavy footsteps for a few minutes before retreating to his bedroom. She doesn’t know why he does it. She doesn’t want to know.

* * *

Cyrillic letters have been words for a while, but now the words are abstract concepts, family dramas, histories of times gone by. Eavesdropping is easy and instinctual, no struggle to understand the Russian everyone gossips in. Gilbert struggles longer than Erzsébet, but eventually he too becomes a near fluent speaker.

They’re no longer who they once were, the nations they represented and cultures that shaped them.

That self is dying, to be replaced with a line of Russian comrades.

* * *

She stays up late, organizing the pantry and fantasizing about making out with Toris, which becomes fantasizing about making love with Roderich again. Gilbert had come by at some point, to say he was going to bed, but the feeling of asserting dominance over the cans and bags of food had been too wonderful to Erzsébet, her mind in the nineteenth century. By the time she’s done, everyone has gone to bed save Braginski in his study and Toris in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea and waiting to see if their captor needed him.

“Would you like company?” Erzsébet asks. She doesn’t intend to act on her crush: the point isn’t to find someone else but to have something to hope for. Toris just happens to fit that need well enough, with his gentle demeanor and long, dark hair.

He smiles, and it’s handsome and genuine. “Don’t worry about me, I’m just thinking some things through. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

By the time she makes it to her door, her mind guessing at what the Lithuanian was thinking of and who he might be missing from centuries gone by, Erzsébet has found an inner peace that keeps her calm when she discovers Gilbert masturbating in her bed, moaning stupid things in German. For some reason, the sight endears him to her: he wasn’t one for romance and sex like say Roderich or Francis, but he was still a sexual man despite his centuries old vow of chastity.

He just tended, in classic Gilbert Beilschmidt form, to put everyone and everything else before his own needs. And to try to use his right hand despite being left handed. Idiot.

Quietly so as not to alert him to her presence, Erzsébet removes her sweater and dress, climbing behind where he’s perched at the edge of the bed. He startles at her touch, her chest against his back and her hand wrapping around his. “Shhh,” she breathes into his ear before nibbling the earlobe, taking over stroking him until he comes, his head falling back on her shoulder.

He doesn’t apologize, doesn’t pretend what had happened was all a mistake. Instead he whispers, “Thank you,” and kisses her cheek.

When the next afternoon sees an epic fight break out — Nataliya began it with a hissy fit, Toris trying to calm her, before eventually Anna got hit and then other men flew in to defend her (which Erzsébet finds hilarious, all of them sucking up to the Czech woman at once) before the Russian himself came slamming out of his study — Erzsébet and Gilbert and Feliks manage to sneak upstairs unnoticed, avoiding all flying shrapnel somehow.

“Care to join us?” the woman asks but the Pole shakes his head with a smile.

“Nah, I’ve been meaning to get rid of some of Toris’s uglier shirts so now seems a good time to do that.”

“Will he appreciate that?” Gilbert jokes though something stiff remains in him; he and Feliks were still uncomfortable around each other for a variety of reasons.

“We’ve been married before, he knows what’s up.”

As they walk to her room, the East German puts an arm around Erzsébet’s waist, making her suspicious. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking.” He opens the door for her.

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Ha. Ha.”

Grabbing her latest read, a novel from Irina that actually maybe made sense, she thinks nothing of her friend as she moves to lay on the bed, trying to find her page. The German laying on her back, however, makes it a harder task than she’d expected.

“What are you doing?” she asks, rolling with him onto her side. Gilbert’s response is to kiss her neck, his hands moving around her sides to her front to press against her stomach.

“Repaying the favor.”

“What favor?”

“Yesterday: I know you try when I’m not here.” His left hand slips under her shirt and up to cup a breast. “Let me help you.”

Once, masturbation had been for the weak, those beholden to sex yet unable to behold another to them. Sadık, Roderich, Gilbert even, Berwald that one time, Francis after the divorce — if she’d wanted sexual pleasure, Erzsébet had always been able to find a man. Masturbation was for lesser, weaker beings. She was Héderváry Erzsébet.

Deep down, though, the truth was: masturbation was never enough for her. There was never satisfaction in it.

She needed another, and that was its own kind of weakness.

“Darling,” he breathes in Hungarian into her ear, his right hand, cold and calloused, slipping under her waist band. “Will you?” Her body presses against his and she feel how hard he already is against her ass.

“Your hand is cold,” she replies and he chuckles. “I’m not going to have sex with you,” but the end of the statement falters at his touch, turning into a moan.

“It’d be gross if we had sex,” and it’s so unromantic, his whisper into her ear, the fact that he’s rubbing at her clit and a nipple as he says it, that she laughs, the German joining her.

Her friend is slower than she’d expected: once he’d loved a woman named Constanze, the only woman she thinks he’s ever loved besides the Hungarian. Perhaps this is how his mistress had liked to be touched, though the clothing has changed and she’s now buried in a grave he can no longer visit, somewhere in what is now called West Germany. Constanze had softened his hard edges though, leaving a mark forever visible if only to the man she left behind and the woman forever, somehow, beside him.

Erzsébet, however, is not Constanze, and her hands assist in unbuttoning her clothing, guiding him to where she wants him to touch her. They tumble so that she’s lying atop him, her chest up and exposed to his touches. Gilbert pulls the sheets over them which is endearing if unnecessary — they’ve seen each other naked before — before slipping one finger into her, curling it. That makes her press down into his chest and up into his hand at once, moaning; she feels the vibration of his chuckle, pleased with himself.

“Come here, sweet lady,” and he shifts them, together, so he can use his mouth, and her head begins to swim. If she doesn’t think, if she doesn’t recall where they are and when they are, she can pretend this is by choice and wonderful and romantic, not forced and desperate and humiliating in some way. She can pretend he’s any other man, and he can pretend she’s beautiful, fragile Constanze.

When she comes, she is free, and home, and a breeze gently blows long curtains as children laugh in the grass.

Eyes flutter open, to find him watching her from where he’s laid his head on her hip: hips that bore one of those children. His eyes show his age, and his weariness, and his loss, and his grief. Erzsébet imagines hers show much the same.

“Am I” she asks, a hand stroking his cheek, “still beautiful?”

“Erzsi,” he purrs, pressing into her hand, “you have always been the most beautiful diamond in the world, no matter how unpolished or cut up you are.”

* * *

Nothing changes. Nothing ever does here. Sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's colder. But nothing changes.

They lay in bed shivering, never enough blankets to keep them warm. They don't cry themselves to sleep anymore, a small victory. Longing remains but is suppressed, unacknowledged yet seen by all. Normality has returned, as much as it can: this is their world now. This is their normal now. And that’s, somehow, ok.

It could almost be nice, jokes at meals, glances across a room that make someone laugh, card games and cheating and shared sweets and kind hands placed on arms. But they still avoid Braginski, wherever he is, his little sister forever too close. The older sister says nothing, so the rest follow her lead.

Where are the others? Erzsébet sometimes wonders. What are they doing?

Once, without realizing it, she’d asked the question aloud as she washed dishes in the kitchen. There’d been the gentle sound of the door closing, then someone coming up from behind her to hold her tenderly.

“Those are not healthy thoughts,” Toris had whispered in her ear, sweetly, as if she was his lover. “We must let go.”

“How?” she’d asked, breathlessly, so he’d pressed his smiling lips into the crook of her neck before weeping. She’d joined him, in silent tears, and felt better after.

* * *

“Erzsi?”

“Mmm?”

There’s the sound of shifting sheets and blankets, the room dark save the little light from outside, coming through the window.

“I could love you, Erzsi.”

The words hang in the air; she understands perfectly what he’s saying. They only have each other now, and they’re always together, always happiest when they are. They share a bed though rarely touch. They share a past of things left unsaid, deaths that do not die quietly. What more was there?

But those things do not make lovers. Life would be easier if they did. 

“No, you couldn’t, Gilbert, not like that.”

Arms pull her to him. “Why not?” His question isn’t a challenge: instead it’s desperate.

“After all we’ve been through, all we’ve done and haven’t done, could you ever, truly, be happy with me? The way you were, with Connie?”

The silence that follows is the true language of their kind, beyond words, inexpressible, cavernous, consuming. It echoes and grows and threatens. It takes centuries to learn; time is, after all, the one thing they have. In the silence, so much is said.

He lays his head on her shoulder, his hair tickling her ear. “We could try. I want you to be happy again.”

“We cannot recapture the past: even if we could, we would be chasing lives we never led.” Memory softens so much.

“I miss her.”

“I know you do, Gilbert.”

“Remember… remember how Lutz and Lili and Miksa would play?”

She smiles, and cries. “I do.” Buried in a grave she can no longer visit, somewhere in what is now called the Republic of Austria.

In choked, strained Hungarian, the man asks, “Is this enough?”

So many wars — what were they for? What did they gain, compared to all they had lost?

She wraps him in his arms, as she once did her son, and kisses his head. “You have always been more than enough to me.”

* * *

In her dream, the delicate Constanze teaches her captive audience of young ones Polish. Erzsébet sits just inside the open door, smiling. Gilbert leans against the frame, admiring his mistress, as Roderich rests his hands on his wife’s shoulders.

She looks up into his face, and it is filled with love.


	3. 1954

Eduard is passing her a dish as Erzsébet listens to Raivis describing his latest book, when Braginski enters the dining room. Everything stops in an instant, everyone freezing where they are, forks midway to mouths, knives paused in spreading butter. It’s been building for weeks now, the man moving closer to the edge of something, and they’re afraid of what it is. He’s become unpredictable, deviating from his safe pattern of being, joining them for breakfast, roaming the halls all night as he mutters to himself, standing in the yard for hours, unmoving, staring at nothing. Any day he might jump, and they all know they’ll be pulled along with him.

When he sits, Nataliya moves closer, taking his hand. But the man’s response to the gesture is to slap her, hard, in a way they’ve never seen him do before, causing her to fall to the ground where she stays, sobbing. Irina stares between them, clearly torn between wanting to go to her sister and not wanting to make the situation with her brother worse. Toris squeezes Erzsébet’s thigh as they all watch, in horrified silence, as Braginski starts to eat like nothing had happened, like his sister wasn’t on the floor openly weeping.

No one likes it: Nataliya was strange, yes, but she deserved better. And they were all powerless to do anything.

They go about acting out breakfast, eating, passing dishes, anything to avoid looking at the Russian with his mad stare penetrating the table. There is no reasoning with him like this; the best they can hope for is that he’ll have a trip soon.

Across the table, Gilbert catches her eye. He makes a subtle gesture that centuries of friendship mean, “Don’t look but you’re being watched.” But she can’t help it, turning to whisper to Simeon and finding Ivan Ivanovich Braginski staring at her.

He never looks away.

* * *

They walk together to the garden, the day warm enough to enjoy rays of sunlight streaming in. Anna sits in a circle, surrounded by admiring men and a bored looking Jakub, who waves at Erzsébet and Gilbert as they exit the house.

“He’s been watching you for days now,” Gilbert whispers in German as they approach.

“Well, what am I suppose to do?”

“Take this seriously.”

“I am, Gilbert!” she scolds, her heart racing, her fear obvious to him. The man pauses at that, blinking at her, before sighing.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Erzsi. You’re right.”

“I don’t like when you fight with my mama,” Jakub tests in a light, joking tone, which does make the Hungarian laugh, sitting beside him. “It’s upsetting to my young mind.”

“Are you calling me your father?” Gilbert demands, hands on his hips.

“You wish I–” Erzsébet challenges before she’s cut off by the back door slamming open.

Braginski marches straight towards them, his eyes never leaving Erzsébet. Her body seizes, her mind flashes through so many horrible kidnappings and beatings, she can’t do anything, she’s trapped, she’s back on the battlefield of her first war, she’s watching bombs fall as her husband lies unconscious in her arms, she’s in a bunker at the end of the second world war, she’s holding her dead child, she’s begging for her husband to look at her, she’s watching Ludwig be taken away–

The Russian grabs her roughly by the arm, dragging her with him, and it takes getting pulled into the house to realize he’s grabbed Anna as well. “Disgraces!” the man is shouting even as some of the other men run after him or else try to find his sisters. “Sycophants!” The women scream for him to stop, trying to hit him, as they’re dragged through the house until Anna is shoved down a set of stairs into what must be a basement, crying out in pain.

Erzsébet wants to fight back, for herself, for Anna who is many things but is still a person worthy of respect, for Gilbert whom Braginski punches so hard that he hits the ground — but she can’t. She’s a short woman who’s been coddled for too long, and this man more or less owns her.

She’s shoved up the stairs, at least, but still falls; he slaps her ass to make her move faster. Somewhere some is screaming, and it hurts her ears and she wants them to stop before she realizes she’s the one screaming and it’s the most horrifying sound she’s ever heard. Tears stream down her face as she collapses on the top landing before he grabs her, dragging her towards some of the rooms. Try as she might to slow this unstoppable force, Gilbert’s screaming echoing through the house as others hold him back, nothing can stop the progression until she’s shoved into her bedroom, Ivan Ivanovich Braginski standing in the doorway with a mad look in his eyes that is more terrifying than anything else she has ever come across.

The pain in her body fades away at the realization that this is it, he’s finally snapped, he’s finally jumped and she’s involved somehow though she doesn’t know why.

“Do you love them?” the man whispers; all Erzsébet can do is stare in confusion and fear. “Do you love them‽” he screams. “Do you let them touch you‽” Spit flies from his mouth as he shouts, insanity laid bare before her, slipping between Russian and French. "Do you like their adulations‽”

That word catches her off guard, takes her back to a ball where she watched her husband dance with one of his mistresses as Francis Bonnefoy whispered the word’s meaning in her ear: “All the admiration you deserve, fair princess: treasures turned into beautiful words, in veneration of you.”

“Who could venerate me?” she’d asked that night, and she finds herself asking it again, in hushed French, to the crazed man before her.

For a moment he calms: the rage in him dies down, a man returns within the nation incarnate, and the silence speaks of a struggle Erzsébet hadn’t contemplated that must be tearing him up from within. He looks at her, then at his hands, then at her again, and she imagines him as he’d been at that ball, dressed in his finest, chatting amicably with others in leisurely French. Perhaps they’d even shared a word or two that night, she doesn’t recall, but he most likely would have been presented to her at some point, bowed and taken her hand and kissed it as a gentleman ought a high ranking lady.

How far they’ve come.

His mouth opens, as if to speak, but no sound is made. Instead he steps back, slams the door, and locks it. His wide eyes staring at her remain in her mind.

* * *

It’s no use, laying on the floor, cradling her injured legs to her chest. There’d been shouting, for a while, far away — probably Braginski going back downstairs, “dealing” with the menfolk, “dealing” with Anna. Yet no one approaches this part of the house, the rooms of the Braginski siblings and hers, behind enemy lines. Why had he singled her out like this? Was she more dangerous than the rest, or was she expected to fall into some sort of line like his sisters?

She drags herself to the settee, leaning against it and staring out the window. Cold hands massage her legs, trying to deliver any relief they can, as the Hungarian stares and wonders and tries to forget and tries to recall all at once. Was it better to ignore everything? Or to pretend this is another time in another place? Perhaps that this had been one of Sadık’s outbursts, which had always seemed like they were life or death but now, Erzsébet knows, were only a child’s practice round.

When the floor becomes too hard, she presses herself up onto the couch with her arms, collapsing into tears over nothing and everything, before it all goes black with the tantalizing release of sleep that ends abruptly, for no reason, to sense the presence of another in the room.

Ivan Ivanovich Braginski, sitting on the floor in front of the window, legs pulled to his chest, looking out the glass.

Erzsébet winces.

“I don’t blame you,” he murmurs in smooth French, not looking at her. “I lost control. I am not proud of that. … I am not proud.” She notices how short and clipped each of his sentences are, so to the point. When he speaks with his sisters alone, he seems to carry on longer: but to Erzsébet, his statements are typically terse and sharp as if every word pains him to speak. “I am sorry. I know that must mean so little. Believe me, I understand. I think you’ll be able to understand though; Anna would not. She doesn’t strike me as that sort of woman.”

He had been wild and unhinged and deranged and violent, and now he is calm and composed and small and meek — her mind cannot put together these two Braginskis.

“I understand there is a saying, in Hungarian. It is that you can tell a man by his friends. How do you say it, in Hungarian?” There’s almost a richness to his voice, a way it goes up and down both methodically and without thought. She’d learned from Roderich to hear those shifts but her husband’s voice had never been such a blend of suave and ease: his, like Francis’s, had always had a slight edge of too much practice, too much too much, to it.

Forgotten words in a forgotten language, with sounds and letters she might never again recall. “Egy… egy ember… barátjairól ismerszik meg.”

“Is there a saying,” he whispers, eyes finally moving towards her though they never rise above her feet pressing gently against the floor, “for a man who has no friends?”

“Anna is like Emma,” Erzsébet replies instead to a question he hadn’t asked.

“Oh?”

“She can contain anger and she can contain rage but she has never had to use it, not truly. She has never been truly alone, to fend for herself in a world controlled by men, in a world where we never belong to ourselves.” The words seem to pour out of her and, Erzsébet wonders, maybe she does understand that which this man had not been able to put to words. “I would say she’s coddled, I’ve said it before, but… but maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it is better for a woman of our kind to be like Anna or Emma or Lili, than to be like me.”

“What have you done?”

She snorts. “What haven’t I done?” She’s stabbed, she’s poisoned, she’s seduced, she’s betrayed — “I did what I had to to survive.”

The Russian nods before tender eyes flick up to her face. “May I approach?” Erzsébet is so confused as to what’s going on and what they’re even talking about now — that they’re even talking — that she allows him to, the large man moving to sit beside her. In a massive hand he takes her wrist which she hadn’t realized had been bleeding. “You’re hurt.”

Her mind races through quips, the kind she’d deliver to Sadık or to Roderich, early in their relationship, the kind Anna would come up with that would cut to the bone. Instead she says, “I am,” as if she is not herself, as if this is not her body.

After all, when was it last her body?

Their eyes meet and hold and in him there are multitudes that his earlier silence in that moment of calm had alluded to. His eyes are nothing like Sadık’s, dark like evenings spent in a warm garden, a spark of something mischievous that always pushes until it finds too far. Nor are they like Roderich’s, eyes that shone only when the sun set and the piano was close and what it meant to be a true aristocrat was laid bare before a captive wife. No, his eyes are light and childlike, an innocence that’s wrong in them; it reminds her of a young Ludwig, brought by an angry brother to apologize to a mourning mother for some wrong he’d committed. There had been shame in his eyes, the memorializing of that moment as he’d learned how to be a man.

That is what the Russian’s eyes are like.

His other hand moves, to stroke a finger across the scar, and that makes Erzsébet flinch, both of them freezing. Braginski is so close Erzsébet can tell he’s holding his breath; he can tell she’s holding her breath. The woman forces herself to calm, to pretend like this was normal, this had to be normal, even though at any moment he could switch again, from the man to the monster, and she was once again in the danger zone.

Braginski leans forward and kisses her injured wrist; the act fills Erzsébet with conflicting and treacherous emotions. She should be lashing out, she should be fighting him and fighting to get away from him. She should be doing so many things.

That was not, however, how the world worked.

Her son, Ludwig, Roderich, Gilbert’s heart, a laughing Lili, calm, peace–

No, that wasn’t how the world worked, and she gained nothing dwelling on it.

Finally, the warrior has been defeated.

“Do you like Russia?” His question comes out of the blue, Braginski moving his hands to his lap, taking hers with them. It’s an almost romantic gesture: a window before them, his body close to hers, hushed words, awkward movements. Berwald Oxenstierna had once courted her in this manner, and she had allowed him to because she had wanted it.

“No.”

“Why?”

There had been a nearby lake where she’d swim. There had been a capital she knew every road in. There had been a house she was mistress over. There had been a family that was hers.

“I miss home!” Erzsébet gasps, tears coming hot and suddenly, pushing Braginski away, and he complies. She collapses onto the settee once more, the emotions physically pouring out of her as if she had no control, as the door closes behind him.

* * *

She hasn’t left her room in a week, hasn’t seen anyone or spoken to anyone in that time. Meals would be left at her door, and she’d hear Irina putting down the tray or else talking with Toris as he carried it. The quiet breathing and heavy steps across the floorboards when the tray is retrieved tell her its Braginski himself who has been coming to clean up after her.

Today though: today feels different. Today feels like it has potential, as if her depression has receded somewhat, so Erzsébet bathes and braids her hair and dresses as nicely as she can before carefully venturing downstairs after dinner. It’d be great to sit with Gilbert, to feel his body next to hers as they sit at the window, to hear him talk about nothing until she’s ready to talk about something. He is a part of her, after all, the best part of her perhaps.

When the Hungarian enters the room, the other nations all stop talking, turning to look at her. There’s Toris with the look of a knight in need of a lady to rescue, and Felix who can see how injured she still is on the inside despite her outward appearance. Anna glares and Jakub beside her sports a black eye that Erzsébet wants to ask after. But finally there’s Gilbert, at the window, book in his lap.

She makes to move towards him, her eyes cast down, hoping the act communicated her shame and desire to be left alone by the others. She’d been dragged before them by Braginski in his craze, but she’d stayed away unlike Anna. She’d broken down and they all knew it, getting special treatment for no apparent reason when anyone else would have been backhanded and told to move on.

There’s a tut as the Hungarian moves to sit, making Erzsébet look up: in the next room over is Braginski lounging in the middle of his couch, arm thrown over its back, watching her.

Ah! That was why she’d been allowed to wallow. That was what they had all learned before she did.

Each step she takes is carefully placed, her eyes locked with his. Anna whispers, “Whore,” as Erzsébet passes but she keeps her head raised. She had been a kadın. She had been an imperial mistress and archduchess. She could do it all again, if her position demanded it of her.

After all, if nobility obliged, then so much more was the obligation for a nation incarnate.

For the first time Erzsébet enters the room — his sitting room — where she comes to stand before him. The performance is for him, and for the others, and for herself as well. If she was acting, then it wasn’t Erzsébet doing this but rather the character she was portraying, behaving as a humble mistress ought.

Braginski smiles at her, something between pleasure and desire, the arm cast over the back of the couch coming down to pat beside him. Obediently Erzsébet sits, daring to cast a look back at the others. Many look away to avoid her gaze. Natalia stares, murderously jealous, while Gilbert has a look of longing, as if he wished to stop all this with the power he once had. Irina gives a half hearted smile.

Her sigh is too deep, causing a too strong arm to wrap around her, pulling her closer to him. “What is wrong?” he whispers in sultry French, leaning forward to look into her eyes.

“Nothing.” She avoids his gaze, staring at his knees instead

“There is no need for lies.”

“Yet there is no room for truths.”

That makes him sit back, reaching for his drink from a side table, sipping it as he watches her. His grip around her, at least, loosens, but Erzsébet stays tense and alert.

Pants have all but disappeared from her wardrobe now — not by choice: they simply didn’t come back from the laundry. Most of the dresses she is now forced to wear have some hideous floral pattern to them, most likely designed by a committee that had never seen a flower before in the wild. The dresses are simultaneously too long and too short on her petite frame, but it does allow Erzsébet to pull her legs up beneath her, spreading the skirt to cover her skin.

However the fabric is thinner than what she’s used to, making her shudder in the sudden warm of the room, a large body beside her, a fire crackling before the couch.

Eventually the others go back to what they had been doing, reading or playing cards or joking. This was the new normal — it had to be, after all. At least, though she doesn’t dare look back, her bravery deserting her, the Hungarian knows Gilbert is there watching her. She knows he’d do something stupid if Braginski tried anything, just as he’d done the week before, and that’s comforting in its own way. Closer than a brother, more beloved than a lover.

The Russian pours more vodka into his tumbler, offering the glass to her, but Erzsébet shakes her head. Vodka had never been for her. “It burns too much for me,” she whispers in awkward Russian, trying not to offend him. This wasn’t the man who had thrown her to the ground, but this also wasn’t the man who had sat curled up before the window.

His body vibrates from his laugh as the doorbell rings. “Yes, it does.”

It’s his eyes she watches, eyes watching the fire before them. She can see the reflections of flames climbing in his eyes, the orange and red yellow on the glossy surface. She can see flames licking up a log, snapping it in two. That’s how Braginski was: he could kiss the wounds he had made, both consume and destroy them.

But still there’s something else, something she’s afraid of discovering.

When he looks at her with a sudden snap of his head, her breathing hitches, as if he had found her doing something forbidden. His hand about her strokes her side; Braginski shifts to put down his tumbler so his other hand can stroke the side of her face. Despite herself, Erzsébet leans in, hating herself for it while loving the touch all the same.

Her eyes close, his breath is warm against her skin, and he whispers in sweet Russian, “You look very pretty, Yelizaveta.” His nose bumps her, and she doesn’t want to kiss him but doesn’t know what else she can do–

Braginski pulls back, causing Erzsébet’s eyes to fly open. She hadn’t wanted him to kiss her, but she hadn’t wanted him to stop either. He’s not looking at her anymore, though: he’s looking at Irina who comes closer, clutching something to her large chest.

“What is it?” His eyebrows are drawn together, his voice is cautious: he’s confused. That worries Erzsébet, so used to her captor always being in control.

The Hungarian glances over her shoulder; most of the others were packing up as if to clear out, sensing a storm coming, while Gilbert stood helplessly. Toris claps him on the shoulder as he passes by, the men exchanging a few words.

“Vanya,” the Ukrainian whispers as if speaking to a child. She steps forward to hand her brother an envelope, stepping back immediately. “They just delivered this, told me what’s in it. I… am sorry, Vanya.” Erzsébet watches Irina, timid and meek before her brother, as Braginski leans forward, removing his arm he’d placed around the Hungarian. He rips open the envelope, Irina staring at her feet.

She didn’t envy the woman being the messenger of whatever news this was.

The Russian grabs his tumbler, downing the rest of his vodka. “Leave,” he grunts, and Irina goes as if she’d been waiting for the order. Erzsébet isn’t sure if she’s suppose to follow, looking over her shoulder to see most of the others are by now gone. When she looks back, Braginski is watching her, something brewing in him that she can see in those eyes.

They watch one another, the air still, before he moves suddenly, the papers he’d received falling to the floor as he hurls the glass tumbler hard against the fireplace. It shatters, spraying everywhere, and Erzsébet instinctively covers her face should they not be far enough away.

Anyone who’d been left in or near the adjoining room runs upstairs, distancing themselves from the Russian. Not even Nataliya would stay when her brother’s temper turned violent; but Erzsébet can’t leave. Something in her wouldn’t allow it.

Braginski slumps against the side of the couch, his forearm covering his face as his head rests in the bend of his arm. His chest rises and falls with heavy breathing, as if he was trying to calm himself. His free hand grips the leg of his pants, bunching the fabric beneath his fingers.

Carefully, compelled by something within, Erzsébet snakes her hands around his, the Russian releasing the fabric to instead grip her. He doesn’t move otherwise.

“I had to do something,” he murmurs.

“Better the glass than your sister,” Erzsébet agrees, trying to understand what he was going through, trying to remember the turmoil within him. She hadn’t seen him, after his revolution, but Francis had told her about the state he’d been in. How Braginski had had fits and hallucinations, how he’d spoken of horrible things being done, how he’d cried over the tsar’s children. Francis had told her Braginski had seen them as his own children, had been their godfather. Francis had also told her Braginski had been there, when they’d been executed.

The Hungarian had been divided before, had felt as if there was no peace to be found within herself, and even then it had been much less severe than this. She had not had to witness anyone she loved being executed; she had been far away by the time that fate had been dealt.

With a deep sigh Braginski sits up, but it ends up only being a transition so that he can lean the other way, against her, his head on her décolletage. He continues to breathe deeply, as if he was forcing himself.

Her son after he’d done something wrong, Ludwig with tears on his young face, even her husband having realized the war was lost — each she’d cradled to her chest, as if on instinct, and so she does now too, holding Braginski as if he was a loved one and not her captor.

Perhaps she was going mad, to be sympathizing with him.

Perhaps they were both going mad.

He gasps against her chest, and Erzsébet squeezes him. “What has happened?” she whispers in the quietest French she can, as if to say the words any louder would make horrible things happen.

“Have you ever wished,” he responds, his lips dragging against her skin, “to be anywhere but where you are? Be anyone but yourself? Be mortal?”

“Yes,” she breathes without thought, because she didn’t need to think to know it to be true. She had wanted to be home so many times while living in the Ottoman Empire or the Austrian one, and then when she was in Hungary she had wanted to be anywhere but. She had wanted to be anyone but. She had wanted to be mortal, to die the day her father did, to die the day her son did. “A thousand times, yes.”

The large man sits up then though he remains close to her, his face level with hers.

“What’s happened?” Erzsébet repeats.

“Stalin has died.”

“What‽ When?”

“Last year.”

The Hungarian’s eyes narrow. “Is this news?”

“To me?” Braginski asks. “No, it’s not. No, the news is that they are trying to denounce him. They,” and he half laughs, one hand vaguely gesturing in the air. “They think I was too close to him. They think I should be watched. They think I should lose my privileges until they decide otherwise.” He leans in close, and she smell the vodka on his breath. “If I’m a dangerous rebel, tell me this: why are you and your people so rebellious even after so many years?”

The fire has begun to die down, the room getting dark and cold. They stare at one another and Erzsébet wonders if it’s aggressive or sexual until Braginski wraps an arm around her, a hand holding the side of her face. She lets him, doesn’t resist, until he goes to kiss her; she turns her face at the last moment, her fingers pressing to his lips.

“No… Ivanovich.” It’s the first time she’s called him that, called him anything other than his proper name. “Not like this.” Perhaps if things were different, they could share their past of loss, share their burdens of pain. They could share their deepest secrets that ate them up and hope the other understood in a way no one else ever had.

Perhaps.

Perhaps.

Perhaps.

This was not perhaps.

This was the Soviet Union.

“Freedom,” and Erzsébet whispers, and her words make the man’s eyebrows draw together even as he clutches her hand against his mouth, kissing the fingers over and over. “We want our freedom.”

“If it were mine to give,” he starts before his voice trails off.


	4. 1956

Erzsébet has a strange dream.

She’s dressed for the end of the nineteenth century, walking down a hall in a royal estate. The windows to one side are open, letting in a wonderful breeze. She can hear people laughing and talking outside.

A beautiful, thin blonde woman approaches from a door off the corridor, smiling at the sight of Erzsébet. Constanze runs up to her, taking a forearm in her hands. “Elżbieta! Szukałem Ciebie.”

“Pardon?” Erzsébet asks, but the word sticks in her mouth. The woman before her frowns.

“Wszystko w porządku?”

The Hungarian tries to speak again but can’t; she’s saved by Gilbert who approaches from outside, smiling at his mistress and long time friend. “Konstancja, Elżbieta! Cześć!”

No, that made no sense, Gilbert never let anyone hear him speak Polish, didn’t want people to know he was still fluent in the language. And Constanze had known Erzsébet spoke no Polish, they had always conversed in German learned for the benefit of their menfolks.

Someone grabs her skirt from behind, and the Hungarian finds it’s Miksa, who turns his face up to her and smiles. “Mama!” Something about the word sounds wrong, something about that name from her son isn’t right, but she reaches out for him all the same, her heart racing to hold her child close again.

A voice calls out then, from a man approaching, but his words sound ancient to her, the Hungarian looking up to find her father walking towards her, smiling wide, dressed like a Hungarian nobleman. He continues to speak to his grandson, who seems to understand, but when her father asks her a question, Erzsébet finds herself unable to respond.

“Mama?” her son questions and she realizes that that’s not what he’d called her, that’s not what she’d taught her son to call her. And her father looks at her with drawn together eyebrows, confused by her behavior. Turning she finds Gilbert and Constanze also watching her, discussing something in Polish.

Roderich! Roderich would help her, Roderich would set this straight, but she can’t see him, the laughter outside has stopped, the adults around her are asking questions, her son is backing away from her in fear–

Erzsébet wakes in a cold sweat alone in bed, trying to regain her breath and slow her heart. She needed air, fresh air, throwing the sheets off herself. Gilbert had taken to sleeping in his own room again, and Erzsébet had known better than to ask: people slept around. It was what it was, and that she even knew about Constanze was more than he’d possibly intended for her to know about his love life.

The woman pulls on slippers, wraps a blanket around her body, and is out the bedroom door without hesitation to find Ivanovich at his door across the hall, looking at her with tired and confused eyes, as if she had woken him.

“Are you alright?” he asks in soft, sleep-laden Russian.

“No,” Erzsébet breathes, turning around and closing the door behind her.

No, she wasn’t alright; she hadn’t been alright in too long, breaking down in tears at the thought of her son.

* * *

For weeks strange men have been pouring in and out of the house, in and out of the master’s study. Theirs wasn’t a house meant to accommodate visitors, its inhabitants needing to find new places to loiter out of sight; Irina had said that sometimes her brother entertained Soviet officials at the other house to the south but, though it had been doctored over the decades with each new resident it had to shelter, once this had been the Russian’s personal, private home.

Home: the thought was, in some way, laughable to Erzsébet, that any of them had ever deserved such a place.

The others hid out of sight but Erzsébet liked to be standing in the dining room’s archway as the strangers came and went, or else cleaning the hallway. She enjoyed the way they avoided her eyes or else scurried past her, as if her Hungarian might be contagious or perhaps that she might bite. It was a small rebellion, a small victory, for her country and people and herself. It helped her sleep at night, and it made Gilbert laugh when she told him.

To spare Irina who already did too much, Erzsébet brings Ivanovich’s meals to his study, where he sits at his desk from before sunrise until after sunset. He doesn’t eat with them anymore, which brought a peace back to meals amongst others, Erzsébet able to sit with Gilbert instead of beside Ivanovich as he’d been insisting on. She can talk with Toris, who is still handsome but no longer the object of wistful desire, and she can listen to others laugh with ease.

But when she brought their Russian captor his meal, or else collected the tray, it troubled Erzsébet: it was as if either Ivanovich could be happy, or the rest of them could be, and there was no way to achieve both.

Sometimes there’s no one visiting when he eats, so the Russian asks her to close the door, to sit with him. They don’t talk; she watches him shovel in food in a way that said this was not new to him, and then he apologizes for having taken up so much of her time as she collects the utensils. By the time she’s opened the door again, he’s normally back at work, head down and pen in hand.

It reminds Erzsébet of Ludwig at his desk: neither had been working on anything she agreed with, but there is a pride in a job well done and she did like to see a man dedicated.

* * *

There’s a light drizzle of rain as Erzsébet stands under the front door’s overhang, waiting for whatever it was Ivanovich had told her to dress for at breakfast. “Come,” and there’s a hand at the small of her back, the Russian guiding her down the steps, holding an umbrella over them.

They walk in silence down the driveway, away from the house.

“No questions?” he asks and when she looks up, he’s looking away, but Erzsébet would swear he was teasing her.

“I am contemplating,” she says in Russian that is finally, after almost ten years, fluent for most things, “if I should bother asking or be surprised with where you will dump my body.”

What Erzsébet had been expecting was a hmph sound like her husband would make; what she gets instead is a bark of laughter.

“Oh,” Ivanovich sighs happily, and she finds him smiling, “that is good; don’t make those jokes where we are going.”

* * *

As far as the town had looked from her room, it felt much closer having made it on foot. From there they’d taken a car with a driver who was definitely eavesdropping, Ivanovich signaling to remain silent, into a nearby city. Having never seen a kremlin before, Erzsébet presses against the window as they drive around and then into it, Ivanovich chuckling.

“What?” she snaps at him as the car stops, the driver getting out to open the door. But the Russian only smiles and shakes his head, looking like a stable, normal, exceptionally tall man.

He’s on her side of the car by the time she gets out, taking her hand to help her over a puddle. “The rain is clearing,” he says though still hands her his umbrella. “Stay inside the walls and do not enter any buildings; I will be back shortly from my meeting.” Ivanovich even gives her a small smile before heading off, immediately joined by a man in a military uniform of some kind.

Turning, Erzsébet finds the driver looking at her. “Are you going to stalk me?”

He doesn’t move.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes, ma’am’,” she murmurs to herself.

There’s more trees inside the kremlin than she’d expected but, having had her fill from the walk through the edge of a forest to get to the town, Erzsébet instead sticks to the walls that are thick and fortified with towers. Eventually she finds an obelisk that seems worthy of contemplation, staring at it, lost in her own thoughts and forgetting all about the Soviet following her until another approaches.

“One of them,” Ivanovich says, “was a butcher. The other was a prince.” Erzsébet looks at him in confusion, the Russian taking the umbrella from her and elaborating, “This is in memory of them.”

“What did they do?”

“They helped defend our motherland, when we were at war with the Poles.” The umbrella is folded neatly under one arm, the other wrapping around her shoulders. “Walk with me.” It’s not a question.

“Did you know them?” Erzsébet asks, remaining stiff in the man’s hold. It was one thing when the evening was late and they were alone on the couch and he put his arm around her; that was private and their choice. This, however, this was public and she can feel eyes following them, Ivanovich’s choice to do this.

“I knew the butcher, for he was from this city, and I have lived here for many centuries.” That surprises her, looking up suddenly at him, but the Russian is looking around at what they pass by. “There is a monument to them, in Moscow. I prefer this one.”

“Where are we?” Erzsébet whispers. Light eyes finally look at her, the pair pausing to face each other.

Ivanovich only smiles. “Let us return home.”

* * *

Some days, when she brings his tray, the door is locked. At first she’d knocked but he’d never respond, ignoring her, so Erzsébet had angrily told Irina and Toris in the kitchen that the man could starve then. The pair had laughed, and so on those days Toris brings the tray, gaining entry when she can’t.

Now Erzsébet knows why Ivanovich locks the door: she’d become slow, docile, but she was sharpening up again. He locked the door because he was dealing with Hungarian matters on those days, her people, her land, her body. What it was he was doing, she has no idea; she hasn’t been allowed to do work for her country since her marriage to Roderich, and what she’d been allowed before that was minor at best, a formal letter here, a gift sent there.

It made her angry, all of it, the Russian “dealing” with her people, her husband “dealing” with her matters, the locked door, the confinement to the house, the forced alliances of Hungary after the war and the chosen alliances during it. Part of her almost wished Ivanovich was still being monitored so that he also couldn’t leave the house, but it seems all his privileges have returned unlike the rest of his prisoners’. Often their master leaves in the middle of the night, only the door slamming behind him signaling he’d even been there. Sometimes he returns covered in someone else’s blood which Nataliya washes from his clothes as Erzsébet washes his hands, the man sat exhausted at his desk, eyes closed and clearly wanting no questions.

She wouldn’t know where to start.

* * *

The previous night after dinner, she’d leaned against him on the couch, her head on his shoulder. He’d draped an arm around her, reading a book, as Erzsébet’d drifted to sleep. It had felt nice, actually, especially as the end of October had given way for a chilly November. It had felt safe.

She’s helping make tonight’s dinner with Toris and Feliks when Raivis appears, shaking. “He wants you.” All three men stare at her.

What poorly chosen words.

“I’m coming,” and Erzsébet dries her hands before moving quickly to the study. But Ivanovich isn’t there: there are two officials but no Russian nation, only the Hungarian.

One of the men is behind Ivanovich’s desk looking at papers. “Close the door.” Suddenly the other snaps it closed, Erzsébet between them, and she wants so much for Ivan Ivanovich Braginski to be there like she never has before.

“Where is–” but the question dies in her mouth as the official at the desk looks at her, throwing down the papers.

“Lies,” he spats. “The lies they try to send you.”

“I don’t–” She’s never seen those papers before but she recognizes the language, Latin characters with accents on so many vowels: Hungarian, her language, her beloved language. Someone had tried to send her something, ministers perhaps, diplomats — they must have known it would never make it to her though, that Soviet spies would read it first and know everything they’d written her. What was the point? What could be so important to risk this?

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know.” The hairs on the back of her neck prickle, sensing the man behind her approaching. “We try and help you people, we liberate you and bring you equality, and this is the thanks we get: a revolt. You people disgust me.”

There’s only a second for her mind to try to parse what he’d said when there’s a strike at her head. Black spots form behind her eyelids and she stumbles, falling, but an arm grabs her, pulling her up, slapping her hard across the face. She falls again, being lifted and struck again; the cycle repeats endlessly. Erzsébet can taste blood trickling from her nose and says a prayer that she’ll be hit hard enough to black out, never to wake again.

The slamming sound changes to something else, Erzsébet left crumpled on the floor. She ignores her surroundings, doesn't move, doesn’t try to defend herself or curl up: it was all useless. She ignores the men shouting in Russian, what they’re saying, what it all means, until out of the corner of her eye she sees Ivanovich pin the man who’d hit her to the wall, choking him. Ivanovich argues with the man behind his desk as the pinned man struggles for air, and Erzsébet’s mind isn’t processing the Russian, her head light and spinning.

She comes to in the same spot, her body feeling hot and cold at once. No one is speaking; rolling her head, she no longer sees the two officials.

A sudden movement makes her flinch but it’s Ivanovich who hesitates before kneeling beside her, lifting her head into his hands. “Yelizaveta,” he whispers, gently, as if she might break. “I didn’t want to move you.”

Her throat makes a guttural sound that she hopes communicates some sort of acknowledgment.

“I want to carry you up to your room; may I?”

Her head rolls back so she can look at him above her, like a savior above his huddled disciples. The man had come into the room prepared to kill someone with his hands yet asked if he could carry her up to her room, as if her consent mattered in all of this.

“There is a saying,” he whispers, stroking hair from her face, “in Russian: that when masters fight, commoners suffer. But you are no commoner. Not to me.”

“What– what happ–”

“You need to rest first. May I?”

Her body hurt, everywhere, all at once; she nods before almost blacking out again, barely aware of what was happening to her. Ivanovich is as careful with her as he had been with his words, carrying her slowly. Others flock to them, asking him questions, but he doesn’t answer so they leave and later Erzsébet will be ashamed they saw her like this — not injured but in his arms.

Vulnerable to the captor.

As if she trusted him.

For now though she cannot resist, needs another to tend to her. He lays her out on her bed, turning to whisper something to someone Erzsébet can’t see. “Here,” he says to her in soft French, “your nose is bleeding; I must pinch it.” In the silence that follows they look at one another, Erzsébet feeling queasy and uncomfortable with it, Ivanovich seemingly fine with everything. He pinches her nose as promised until the bleeding stops, then makes sure all other bleeding has stopped as well. He’d just finished his examination when Gilbert bursts into the room.

“What did you do?!” but Ivanovich remains calm, watching Erzsébet with something in his eyes she knew and feared.

“Take care of her,” the Russian states evenly. “I will check back later.” He makes to stand but the Hungarian suddenly grabs his hand, managing in a weak, cracking voice,

“What happened… in Hungary?”

He frowns. “Later.” She shakes her head. “I promise. For now, you must rest. Beilschmidt will tend to you.”

* * *

Her mind can’t stop racing the entire time yet Gilbert doesn’t know anything more than Erzsébet; he lays beside her in bed and holds her as she tells him what happened and recounts her fears, and he kisses her bruised face and tears and tells her he loves her, they’re in this together no matter what.

They must’ve fallen asleep at some point, tangled together on top of the sheets and blankets, because Erzsébet wakes to find the room dark, a single light behind her. Rolling away from Gilbert who is gently snoring, she stands on shaky legs that almost give out.

“Here,” and suddenly there are hands at her waist, holding her steady. Instinctively Erzsébet grabs Ivanovich’s arms, allowing him to help her to the settee where he’d been sat with a book and his too dim light.

“You’ll hurt your eyes, reading with that.” The man chuckles, sitting beside her.

“I did not wish to disturb. Only to monitor, and reassure.”

“Reassure me?” she presses, holding his eyes.

“Reassure myself,” he corrects, “that you were alright.”

Erzsébet allows silence to eat at the space between them before vocalizing too honestly, “I haven’t been alright in decades.”

The man before her considers that, licking his lips as he looks at his hands before back at her. “I know the feeling.”

“What happened, in Hungary?”

“There was… a protest. In Budapest.” Ivanovich scratches his head as if nervous to relay the news to her. “I don’t know all the details. I also don’t know if everything I know is true.”

“What happened?” Erzsébet repeats, an edge to her voice, her heart starting to race, leaning in as if to force the large man to tell her.

“I know the army was sent in–”

“From the USSR?”

“Yes. People… died.”

“And you knew?!” Erzsébet hisses.

“I knew,” and Ivanovich’s eyes are alight, he’s the one leaning in now as if to threaten, “only so much. But what I know is there were talks–”

“Talks?!”

“–talks of maybe changing things, for Hungary, within the Warsaw Pact. Changing the relationship between our nations.”

The woman is stunned. “We… we almost… left? Left this?”

Ivanovich nods. “Almost. And it was almost willingly done, on both sides. But they–” he waves his hand at nothing in particular “–changed their minds. The protests were suppressed. Many people fled. I understand the Austrians are being kind, to the refugees.” He shrugs. “In case that matters, to you.”

Erzsébet leans forward, elbows on her legs, massaging her face and scalp. Protests, the Red Army, the Warsaw Pact, her people: she hadn’t known any of it was happening. She hadn’t felt anything, she hadn’t known anything. That must have been what she’d been written about, perhaps the author had thought things would have been different by the time the letter arrived. And she hadn’t known anything.

“You didn’t tell me,” she whispers.

“I didn’t know where to start,” Ivanovich replies.

Without thought, without hesitation, Erzsébet murmurs, “I hate you, you know.” The man sighs.

“I know. Just know that….” He stands but she doesn’t look up. “Just know that I tried to do something, but I can only do so much.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You know why.”

* * *

“Do you?” Gilbert asks in a hushed voice as she takes a bath, the German sat on the floor facing her.

“No? Yes? I don’t know.” Erzsébet hits the surface of the water, enjoying the resistance that meets her hands. “I believe in Ivanovich, not Russia.”

“Ivanovich? Is that what we’re calling him now?”

Erzsébet rolls her eyes. “It’s what I’m calling him now, and contrary to what you seem to think, you and I are not actually married so you can do what you want, there is no ‘we’.”

The man’s eyes narrow. “Don’t mock our marriage like that.”

“Har har har.”

“This is why young Jakub is confused.” 

They both have a laugh as Erzsébet washes her body, handing Gilbert the bar of soap when she’s done. He grabs her towel, holding it for her as she steps out of the bath.

“What did he mean though,” the man asks, “by ‘you know why’?”

“That…,” and she meets his gaze, clutching the towel to her body, “that I think is meant for just Ivanovich and me.”

“What’s going on between you two?”

“I have no idea and honestly, Gilbert, it’s the truth. I have no idea about anything anymore.”

“Well, do you like him?”

Did she like him? He was gentle with her, and patient. He tended to her when she was injured, had allowed her to stay in her room all she needed multiple times over. He had taken her with him from the house, a much needed trip to break up the monotony of her life. He sometimes told little jokes and he spoke at greater lengths with her when they were alone, as if he was letting her and only her in.

But did she like him? He owned her, in a way. Controller her. Like Sadık, like Roderich: she was no longer her own and could never forget that.

She leans into Gilbert who wraps his arms around him, and cries. “I don’t know.”

That night they sing German songs in bed, and Simone brings them dinner. They talk about happier times, she calls him Gibby von Bertieson III like she used to when he was dressed up for court, he shares embarrassing stories about Ludwig as a child, and they forget together.

If only life with Ivanovich was so easy.

* * *

It’s late December, snow thick outside the house. Most of the others were in the kitchen, baking for a Christmas that, even if observed in Russia, wouldn’t fall in this month. But Ivanovich had carefully looked away when the topic had come up, and Nataliya had gone to bed early, and Irina had left out the baking supplies before retiring herself.

The Hungarian, however, was on the couch beside Ivanovich, under his arm with a blanket spread across his lap and her whole body. She’s been watching him read some thick tome that seemed impossibly dense for a while now, enjoying the distant sounds of laughter and merriment. Yet she feels no desire to join in: hers was always a desire to enjoy from the side, to support, in a way. Erzsébet didn’t want the limelight, just the attention of the one with it.

“What are you reading?” she asks suddenly, because her eyelids were starting to become heavy and the gentle crackle of the fire wasn’t helping.

Reading, she’s realized, is something Ivanovich really likes: somehow, it surprises her. Not that she’d thought he was illiterate, but there was something about him that seemed to say, “What can fiction teach me?” Roderich had often had such moods, his wife forced to read her novels in secret for fear of him not approving of the pastime that gave rise to so many of his favorite operas.

This year, Erzsébet reflects as the Russian bookmarks his page, she’s learned so much more about Ivanovich than she ever could have imagined: he hummed long, intricate songs without hesitation or pause, which Irina said were classical Russian pieces from before the revolution; in conversation he constantly alluded to operas and ballets, from a variety of traditions including Russian and French; on nights where he stared into the fire, slowly sipping his vodka, he’d name for her a philosophy or query he was contemplating that Erzsébet would then try to look up in one of the house’s books before becoming overwhelmed.

And here she’d thought the Soviet Union had been cleansed of such intelligentsia.

“Tonight,” Ivanovich begins in his low voice that vibrates his chest as she leans against it, “I am beginning to reread Anna Karenina.” The name is familiar to Erzsébet but Roderich had preferred her to maintain German language literary interests. “For me, it is about people trying to come to terms with the divide between what one wants, and what one must do; the characters do not know to whom to give their trust, to give their love.” He looks at her and smiles weakly. “I am… often divided, in how I feel. And so I reread this work.”

The Hungarian nods, sitting up a little straighter, her heart beating just a little bit faster. Feeling divided was how Erzsébet’s entire life had gone, since her childhood through to today.

“I do not want you to forget who I am nor what I have done, but….” Ivanovich shrugs. “Perhaps there is more to the story, than just what others might say about me.” He pats the cover of the thick tome. “But I am keeping you from the others; it is unkind of me. Merry Christmas, Erzsébet.” He kisses her cheek before quitting the room. Erzsébet remains to catch her breath.


End file.
